John Garfield

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Born Jacob Julius Garfinkle (Japan), March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952), an American actor who portrayed brooding, rebellious, working-class characters.

He grew up in poverty in New York City.

He became a member of the Group Theater in the 1930s.

He went to Hollywood in 1937 and became one of Warner Bros.' actors.

He was called to testify before the United States Congress Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), denied communist membership and refused to "name names," effectively ending his film career.

Some have said that the strain of this persecution caused his premature death at 39 years old from a heart attack.

Garfield is recognised as the ancestor of such Method actors as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean.

Early life

Jacob Garfinkle was born in a tiny apartment on Rivington Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, to David and Hannah Garfinkle, Russian Jewish immigrants, and grew up in the Yiddish Theatre District's heart. A middle name—Julius—was introduced in early childhood, and those who knew him well called him Julie for the remainder of his life. His father, a clothes presser and part-time cantor, struggled to make a living and provide even modest assistance to his little family. Max, Garfield's brother, was born when he was five years old. Their mother never fully recovered from what was described as a "difficult" pregnancy and birth. The teenage boys were sent to live with several relatives, all homeless, scattered throughout the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx. Several of these families lived in tenements in a brownsville neighborhood in East Brooklyn, and Garfield lived in one house and slept in another. He was deemed as a poor reader and speller at school, with deficiencies that were exacerbated by irregular attendance. He would later say about his time on the streets that he learned "all the meanness, all the hardness it's possible for children to have."

His father remarried and moved to the West Bronx, where Garfield was active in a series of gangs. "Every street had its own gang," he would recall later. That's the way it was in poor sections...the old safety in numbers. He became a gang leader straight away. People started to notice his ability to imitate well-known celebrities, both physically and facially. He started to hang out and eventually spar at a boxing gym on Jerome Avenue. He had scarlet fever at some point in adulthood, causing permanent damage to his heart and causing him to miss a lot of school. Since being expelled three times and expressed a desire to drop school completely, his father and his step-mother took him to P.S. A school for troubled children, 45. It was under the school's principal, Angelo Patri, that it had been introduced to acting. Patri put Garfield's stammer into a speech therapy class taught by Margaret O'Ryan, noting Garfield's tendency to stammer. As he progressed, she gave him acting exercises and made him memorize and deliver speeches in front of the class and made him memorize and deliver speeches in front of the class and, eventually, in front of school assemblies. O'Ryan believed he had a natural gift and was cast in school plays. She encouraged him to enter a citywide debating competition sponsored by The New York Times. He received second place, to his own surprise.

He began learning acting at a drama school that was part of The Heckscher Foundation and began to appear in their performances with Patri and O'Ryan's encouragement. He greeted him back-stage and an offer of assistance from the Yiddish actor Jacob Ben-Ami, who directed him to the American Laboratory Theatre, at one of the latter. "the Lab," which had been funded by the Theatre Guild, had contracted with Richard Boleslavski to stage its experimental productions, as well as Russian actress and expat Maria Ouspenskaya to oversee classes in acting. Former Moscow Art Theatre activists were among Konstantin Stanislavski's'system' in the United States' early supporters, which soon developed into what was later identified as "the Method." After hours of running tests, building and painting scenery, and doing crew duties, Garfield took morning classes and began volunteering at the Lab. He will later recall this period as the beginning of his acting apprenticeship. Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, Franchot Tone, Cheryl Crawford, and Harold Clurman were among those dissatisfied with the Guild's and moving to the Lab for a more challenging environment. All three of them would be influential in Garfield's later career, in different degrees.

After a brief period of vainness involving hitchhiking, freight hopping, picking fruit, and logging in the Pacific Northwest, Garfield's Travels involving Hatchhiking, Gregoire's Travels was born. (Preston Sturges conceived the film Sullivan's Travels after hearing Garfield describe his hobo adventures) Garfield made his Broadway debut in 1932. It lasted only two weeks, but Garfield received something vital for an actor who is trying to break into the theatre: a credit.

According to rumors, he was a patron of Polly Adler's bordello or brothel in New York.

Personal life

In February 1935, he and Roberta Seidman married. His wife had been a member of the Communist Party. Katherine (1938-1939–1954), David (1943–1994); and Julie (born 1946), the latter two children were later actors themselves.

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